Celebrating Liturgical Time

Days, Weeks, and Seasons

• 2nd installment in the “Celebrating” series: an overview of liturgical theology and praxis • Written by a well-known liturgical scholar • Includes history, theology, and practical information

Celebrating Liturgical Time continues the standard of scholarship set by Patrick Malloy’s Celebrating the Eucharist. It is ideal for students, clergy, and church members who seek to strengthen their knowledge—and parochial practice—of liturgical timekeeping and the Daily Office.

J. Neil Alexander is Dean of the School of Theology at the University of the South (Sewanee) and former bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee.

In his new book, Bishop Alexander has given us an excellent study of the fundamental shape of the liturgical year — but he has also given us much more. Celebrating Liturgical Time offers readers a spirituality of the liturgical calendar. There are passages in this book which immediately invite the reader to meditation and prayer. This book gives much-needed clarity to aspects of the 1979 BCP which are often misunderstood by liturgical leaders. This catechetical dimension will well serve clergy and lay leaders in their embodiment of the logic of the annual cycle in the liturgical celebrations of their local communities. But equally important is the need within the church for the formation of a spirituality of the liturgical calendar. In Celebrating Liturgical Time, Bishop Alexander has given us both.Louis Weil, Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Emeritus)

Successful as “a practical guide to the use of the rites” with an eye to rituals in time, this book is very much more than its author modestly claims. The attentive reader will feel here not only the beating heart of liturgy in time, but the living logic of the faith itself. Alexander’s clear, accessible style is deceptive: this book is poetic, rich, and deep.James Farwell, Virginia Theological Seminary

Neil Alexander has ministered as a priest, an academic, a diocesan bishop, and a seminary dean. All of it shows. This book is full of pastoral wisdom and scholarly sophistication. It does not shy away from coming down on one side of an argument, but it is never argumentative. I can think of no other book that so successfully weaves together historical, theological, and pastoral treatments of the liturgical day and year. Certainly, this is the first book to do that work specifically for Episcopalians. In our Church, it is bound to become the standard reference on how common prayer and Christian life unfold within the natural cycles and rhythms of time..Patrick Malloy, The General Theological Seminary

Here is an accessible, clear, and inviting commentary, at once practical and insightful, detailing how and why and what the 1979 American Prayer Book expects, implies, and assumes in the implementation of its services. Dr. Alexander, out of his broad and deep experience as a pastor and scholar, priest, professor, and bishop, proves himself yet again to be a wise and knowledgeable teacher, and careful attention to this book will surely deepen the devotion of all whose worship is guided by the Book of Common Prayer.Philip H. Pfatteicher, The Church of the Advent, Boston